GORGIAS (c. 483–375 B.C.)  , Greek sophist and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily . In 427 he was sent by his fellow-citizens at the head of an embassy to ask Athenian protection against the aggression of the Syracusans . He subsequently settled in Athens, and supported himself by the practice of oratory and by teaching rhetoric . He died at Larissa in Thessaly . His chief claim to recognition consists in the fact that he transplanted rhetoric to Greece, and contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose . He was the author of a lost work On Nature or the Non-existent (IIepi TOO pi ovros crept vo-ews, fragments edited by M . C . Valeton, 1876), the substance of which may be gathered from the writings of Sextus Empiricus, and also from the treatise (ascribed to Theophrastus) De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia . Gorgias is the central figure in the Platonic dialogue Gorgias . The genuineness of two rhetorical exercises (The Encomium of Helen and The Defence of Palamedes, edited with Antiphon by F . Blass in the Teubner series, 1881), which have come down under his name, is disputed . For his philosophical opinions see SOPHISTS and SCEPTICISM .

See also

Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Eng. trans. vol. i. bk. iii. chap. vii.; Jebb's Attic Orators, introd. to vol. i . (1893) ; F . Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, i . (1887); and article RHETORIC .